Tragedy taught Richmond Hill couple lesson

Bragging rights

Staff photo/Nick Iwanyshyn

Flo and Willem Shurman, 94 and 89, were honoured by Worldwide Marriage Encounter as the longest married couple in Ontario. The
ceremony was held at the Richmond Hill United Church — the same place they were married 71 years and two months ago.

We could ask the experts on Valentine’s Day what makes a marriage last and get the usual answers ... communication, respect, that sort of thing.

Or we could ask the real experts and instead get a heart-wrenching story with a fairy-tale ending.

That would be Florence and Willem Schurman, recently pronounced the longest married couple in Ontario.

If anyone would know what makes a marriage work, they would. After all, if you can keep it together for 71 years, you must be doing something right.

It took a tragedy to teach them the true secret to marital bliss.

It happened during the tumultuous early years of the Second World War. Florence was a teenager whose parents had moved north of Cochrane, Ont. to find work cutting logs. It was remote, but they had no choice. You went where the jobs were back then or starved.

The elementary school was located across the lake. In warmer months, Florence travelled by boat. Winters, her father placed sticks to mark a path over the ice. In the between-seasons, they walked all the way around the lake to get to class.

But the school only went to Grade 8. To go to high school, Florence moved to Richmond Hill to live with her grandmother and aunt.

Willem Schurman was a gregarious local lad who had quit Richmond Hill High in Grade 10 to work in a greenhouse. His father had died and he and his younger brother had to help keep the family afloat.

When he saw the pretty girl who lived across from him on Richmond Street, he was smitten. On his mother’s urging, he asked her to a roller-skating party. They hit it off.

It was while they were courting that Florence got the terrible news.

Her parents had had an argument, her father storming out of the house and across the frozen lake. At least, it seemed frozen the day before. The afternoon’s sun had softened the surface. He fell through. Her mother heard him call, raced out to help. She fell through, too. A neighbour and Florence’s nine-year-old brother pulled her out. Florence’s father, paralyzed with the cold, submerged, never to be seen again.

That argument forever haunted her mother.

“Never, ever, part on an angry word,” she warned Florence, time and again.

She and Willem decided they never would.

Three days after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, the young couple married. It was Dec. 10, 1941. She was 18, he was 23. Shortly after the small ceremony at Richmond Hill United Church, Willem went west to train for war.

“You had no idea what the future was, where you were going to be,” Florence remembers now, nestled in her cozy Rosetown apartment.

It’s snowing outside the sliding glass doors, but it’s nothing compared to the snow that fell that long-ago December.

“They were serious times.”

In the end, Willem didn’t go overseas; he failed the medical test and was discharged in 1945. They set up house in Richmond Hill.

With a baby to feed, more on the way, Willem knew he’d never make it on his $6-a-week wages at the greenhouse and jumped at the raise offered to him by Neal’s flowers — $11 a week.

“Insane!” Willem laughs about it now. “Try and buy a hamburger for that these days!”

But it was a different world, all around. Average income was $1,777, a car cost $850, a house $4,075, gas sold for 12 cents a gallon and a loaf of bread eight cents. Marriage was for keeps.

As they raised six children, moved to Aurora for nearly 30 years and Willem forged a career in insurance sales, they kept true to their promise: they never parted on angry words. Never went to bed angry. Always kissed goodnight.

“We still do that, I’m not ashamed to say,” Willem shares a smile with his wife. “Except when she’s got a cold.”

There were ups and downs over the years, the kind couples face in a lifetime — a first-born son lost to colon cancer, a grandchild’s struggle with a brain tumour.

Willem was diagnosed with prostate cancer a while back and spent a very bad month in hospital. The doctor was optimistic, though. He’d managed to save 15 patients with surgery and boldly predicted Willem could survive another 10 years.

“That was 30 years ago!” he remarks. “The years just fly by, yep they do.”

“Did you ever cheat on me?” she asks him now.

“Nope, I never did,” he replies. “Not once.”

The walls of the tiny apartment are covered with family faces and happenings, plaques commemorating their work with the horticultural and historical societies, another honouring Florence as senior citizen of the year.

They’ve stayed busy. That helped. The yearly trip to Festival of the Sound in Parry Sound. His men’s Tuesday Group (something to do after retirement) and the McConaghy Old Boys — only 15 classmates left now. She dabbles with Facebook and is trying to get get Willem onboard for one more camping trip.

“We’ve had some good times,” he says. “Must have had, to have this many days married.”

Bad times too, but they didn’t last.

“Love makes all things bearable.”

Today, they’ll exchange Valentine’s Day cards, never missed a year. Picked them out days ago.

Florence pulls out the old marriage certificate, yellowed with age. The folks who signed as witnesses, they’re all gone now.

“My maid of honour, she passed away in 1950. Milk leg they called it.”

She’s not sure what that is; something to do with giving birth.

“My brother, of course, is no longer with us either,” Willem adds. “And the minister is gone now, too.”

They stare a few minutes longer, when Florence bursts out laughing. “I never signed this! You mean after all these years?”

Maybe, she muses, we’re not even legal!

“Well we can’t do anything about it now,” Willem chuckles. “It’s history.”